


negative space

by Bloodsbane



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Humor, Light Angst, M/M, Nature, Set in Episodes 159-160 | Scottish Safehouse Period (The Magnus Archives)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-18
Updated: 2020-06-18
Packaged: 2021-03-04 00:08:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,135
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24794419
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bloodsbane/pseuds/Bloodsbane
Summary: Jon and Martin sit together and talk about poetry. The world is wide around them.
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist
Comments: 4
Kudos: 78





	negative space

Jon finds him sitting out back. The flimsy wooden door opens up into something resembling a garden, tiny, hugging the cottage self-consciously, as if ashamed of its chickweed and groundsel and few wilting heathers. The barest stone wall guards it against strong upland breezes, ones that roll down distant hills like excitable children. They kick up the grass and make it shimmer, the dull light stretching across the moorland until the grass is gone into stone and sea. 

It’s a fantastic view, even if it’s not so unlike what can be seen from the front porch. The domination of gorse, cheery swaths of yellow thick as oil on canvas. The distant but impressive outcropping of dark rocks leading down to the loch. The crash of the waves never ending. The clouds, the sky. Quite picturesque, really. 

And then there’s Martin, at a lone wooden table tucked close to the wall, near a window with the curtains drawn inside. There’s a flower pot on the sill, filled with dust and dirt and nothing else. 

There Martin sits, on the edge of the picture, a spot of humanity that doesn’t quite blend with the earthy tones, the blue accents. Before him is an eight by eleven cut of negative space. It’s offensively stark, lying there on the dry wood surface of the table, as if someone took a scalpel and carefully carved away all that might lay there, leaving only a distinct lack of dimension or depth. Martin holds a pencil in his hand. Suspiciously, it is not very close to the paper. 

Jon takes the other chair. It’s cold out here, colder than it would be in London right about now, but Martin has very nice, very thick sweaters, and Jon has a quilt wrapped around his shoulders besides. Not to mention tea. He cautiously rests a second mug near Martin, but the trail of wafting steam is already being stolen by the wind. Jon covets his own freshly-brewed warmth as he stares inquisitively at the man across from him. 

“Are you writing a poem?” he asks eventually. 

“Sort of,” Martin says. “Not really.”

“Mm.”

“Been trying to, anyway.”

“Mmhm.”

“But it’s been a bit difficult.”

“...Is it always? Difficult, I mean. To write.”

“No, not usually. It used to be easy, you know? Maybe too easy.” There’s this way that Martin laughs, and Jon’s not overly fond of it, but it comes and goes so quickly it never seems worth mentioning. “Not that it’s ever been a goal of mine to make something _good_ , really.”

“What do you mean?”

“...Well, it’s just not what I write for,” he explains. The pencil is limp between Martin’s fingers. His forearm stretches along the entire length of the table. Jon unsubtly nudges the mug of tea closer to him, but Martin doesn’t seem to notice it. “I mean, the whole reason I started was just - to get it all out.”

“To get what out?”

“All the feelings. Did I tell you I’ve been writing since I was a teenager?”

“No, uh, you haven’t really talked about what got you started.”

“When I was kinda young, I heard this thing, where if you’re upset or angry at someone, you write them a letter. It could be as nasty as you wanted it to be; you could say whatever you wanted, so long as you wrote it all down. And then you would get rid of it - toss it out or burn it or something. And I was having sort of a rough time, and I had a lot of… a lot of anger, I guess, and nowhere to put it. So I tried the letter thing. 

“It didn’t work, exactly. Not at first. Because everything I wrote sounded so stupid and annoying. Like, it all just sounded really petty, y’know? I could barely get a sentence down before I was too disgusted with myself to continue. Eventually I gave up on writing full sentences altogether and just started writing down single words. And that sort of helped. I didn’t have to say why I felt how I did, or like, justify it. Just jotted it down. Then it got a little easier, and when I ran out of words, I tried phrases. In the end, it read a lot less like a letter and more like a very messy, bad poem.”

Jon looks down at the blank paper. “And that’s how you got started on poetry?”

“More or less. I felt a lot better afterwards, and by then I was having a bit of fun coming up with sort of abstract ways to say what I was feeling. I kept it up; I’d try writing something whenever I felt bad. Then I started writing just when I wanted to, about things I liked or found interesting, but couldn't really express that to anyone else.”

“Mm.”

“I… When you saw me again. After you woke up. You asked if I’d been writing any poetry lately, and-” Martin laughs again, but it’s bitter and cold. It falls into the empty white before him and leaves no trace of itself. “Well, you know.”

“I… yes. I remember, I mean.” 

“Yeah.”

Jon sips his tea. Martin lifts his free hand to take his mug, stubbornly keeping hold of the pencil. But he doesn’t drink, only rolls his thumb along the perfectly impersonal cream ceramic. 

“I’ve been… sort of wanting to write, lately. It’s been a long time though. I think maybe I forgot how to… to say those sorts of things. I tried to think small, like before, just single words, but I couldn’t get anything down. It all feels so…”

Jon gauges the pause, gets the feeling there’s room for him to speak up. “I’ve never thought much about the process of actually writing poetry,” he admits. “What you’ve described makes sense enough to me, I suppose. Though I have to wonder how you’d manage it without feeling… I don’t know, pretentious?” 

“That’s the thing though! I’ve never really had that problem.” Martin grips the pencil tightly, glaring down at his paper. “Because when I write it’s not like I’m trying to say anything really. It’s never been for anyone else. Just me. It never mattered if it didn’t actually sound any good, or, or if I didn’t have very original metaphors or whatever. It doesn’t matter. So long as I get it down. Prettying it up could come later, if I wanted it to.”

“...So what’s different now? You make it sound like it was easy.”

“It _was_ easy,” Martin sighs. “It used to be so easy. Why can’t it be easy now? Especially because I want to write something, I can feel it. I just have no idea what it is, apparently.”

“I… I’m sorry. I wish I knew how to help.” 

“Isn’t your fault,” Martin mumbles. “Just… I worry, sometimes. I still feel so… empty. Not all the time! Just now and then. Not that numb, suffocating feeling like when I was stuck in the Lonely. Not quite. It’s different. Like… I dunno. It’s something cold and vague.”

Jon takes a sip of his tea, hands shaky. “Martin?”

“I’m okay, I promise.” Martin’s voice is eager in it’s gentleness. “These are just some dumb feelings, they’ll pass.”

“They aren’t dumb.” 

“They don’t make any sense. It’s stupid.” Then suddenly Martin is angry. He draws a single sharp line down on the paper, near the edge, and huffs. “This is so stupid. Why does it have to be so complicated? It’s never been difficult before. Just say the words! Just write them down and there they are. Just get it out and be done with it. Crumple it up. Throw it away.”

“You don’t… _have_ to write,” Jon suggests. 

Martin’s anger is replaced with a look of resigned misery. “But I want to. I want to _make_ something, Jon. I don’t like that I can’t.” 

“I… I don’t think I quite understand.”

“There’s something there. I know there is, because I can feel it, and it makes me want to write so badly I keep getting distracted. I know it’s there because it wasn’t before, for ages. But now that I feel it, but can’t get it out… It just puts me right back where I started, doesn’t it? So full up of something and nowhere to put it. It’s awful. And if I can’t make it into something... what’s the point?”

Jon stays silent. Instead, the wind calls to Martin, pulling his gaze away from his scarred paper and towards the great expanse. Seated as they are against the cottage, with the wall to one side and shingles cutting dark grooves into the sky above, it’s easy to pretend there’s nothing more than what stretches out before them. The two men sit, content and cornered, still as the cold red brick, while distantly nature sways back and forth. The greens and yellows sway. Though hard to see, as if hiding, Scottish bluebells dot the landscape. 

Over the last week or so, Jon has found great comfort in the absolute disregard their surroundings seem to have for them. The tide rocks back and forth and always will. Heavy wooled beasts chew their cud and stamp through muddy churned soil, tails flicking idly, eyes to the horizon. Dry burrows within easy distance hide beneath the gorse, full of rabbit kittens. A chaffinch hops about, looking for seed. Here, they are small. Here, words mean little. The heady buzz of static power is torn away from Jon’s teeth the second it tries to escape, swept away by the hungry wind. He is as feeble and harmless as the the green things, growing through cracks in the stone. The earth beneath him is still and alive. The space above him is so immense that Jon cannot possibly Know it, and isn’t that comfortingly human of him. 

“Have you tried writing about all this?” Jon asks. 

“What, Scotland?” 

“Sure. Or, well, I meant more just… all of this.” He flaps a hand at the scene before them. 

“A nature poem? I mean, maybe. That doesn’t really have much to do with what I’m feeling now, though.”

“Couldn’t it?” Jon asks, and he sits up a little straighter. One hand, faintly warm from his tea, reaches over to tap at the edge of the paper. “Here, why don’t I help you?”

This somehow manages to pull an actual laugh out of Martin. The sun feels very warm on Jon’s skin, despite the persistent breeze, which toys with his loose fringe. Martin asks, “What? Are you saying you want to write a poem with me?”

Jon, heartened, offers Martin a facetious smirk. “Just because I’m not fond of most poetry doesn’t mean I couldn’t write something, if I tried. You said it was easy.”

“I said it was easy for me, and only because I’ve never given a damn about making anything that was any good.” 

“I’m sure I can write a poem just as bad as any of yours.”

Another laugh. For a brief moment, the sunlight is strong, breaking through a slightly overcast sky. Its rays fall and dapple the countryside like a splatter of paint, some careless stroke of the brush. Martin says, “Sure, why not.”

He hands Jon the pencil. Jon accepts it and the paper, pulling them both over to his side of the table, which is really still mostly Martin’s side. Or maybe there isn’t a side at all, just a table, with their hands and mugs and thoughts mingling together at the center. 

Jon stares down at the paper, mostly blank but for its single graphite line in one corner, the remnant of anger that already seems so far away from them both. Jon thoughtlessly transforms it into a stem, adding a little leaf on one side and topping it off with the crude shape of a five-petaled flower. Feeling a bit shy, he says, “I don’t actually think your poetry is bad, by the way.” 

“Hm?”

“I, uh. I told you before that I had the opportunity to read some,” Jon mumbles. “Obviously I’m not exactly an authority on the subject-”

“That’s never stopped you before,” Martin teases. 

“Yes, well. I liked your poems, I think. They were…” 

“Charmingly amateurish?” 

“Honest,” Jon says, nearly snaps, but his tone only makes Martin smile again. “I could tell you were the one who write them.”

“I do tend to sign my work.”

“That’s not what I-”

“And, if I recall correctly, you did find those poems by digging through _my_ things-”

“Are we going to write a poem together or not?” Jon says, loudly and with some desperation, and Martin’s eyes seem like the sun on the sea, like the fading clouds, like something new but familiar again at last. 

**Author's Note:**

> Got inspired last night at like 1 AM, had to turn my laptop back on so I could start working on this. I'll be honest and say I'm very heavily projecting a lot of feelings wrt writing/poetry onto Martin here. I've also been listening to an audiobook with a lot of heavy nature imagery, wonderfully written and performed, and it really made me want to write something like this. Anyways, hope you guys enjoyed it!


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